The False Martyr (49 page)

Jaret looked meaningfully
toward Commander an’ Pmalatir, trying to remind his blusterous
friend of the sensitivities of the armored men surrounding
them.

“
What?” Joal asked,
missing the suggestion entirely. “If I ever become that delusional,
I want you to cut my head off too. Put me out of my damn misery.
So, yeah, I was in on Traeger’s plan. I practically kissed him when
he told me about it. And don’t give me your lectures about
‘tradition’ and ‘defending the symbols of history’. It had to be
done. I don’t know why you couldn’t see it. The situation was
entirely untenable. I barely had enough food for my men, let alone
the people who were actually working the land and paying the taxes.
And we didn’t say anything to you because we knew you would do
something stupid, like try to stop us.”

A month ago Jaret would
have been furious, just as he’d been in the throne room when he
had, in fact, tried to stop Traeger, the commander of the Legion in
his attempt to usurp the Emperor and put Jaret in his place. Now,
he could not feel anything about the betrayal except a slight
regret that lingered behind the emotional barrier in his mind. “So
you were able to maintain command of your units?”

Joal answered as if all
this should be obvious, “Traeger was confident the other commanders
would join us but didn’t trust them with the details in advance, so
the embedded legionnaires were supposed to take control of
individual units. I remained at Pada Por in case anything went
wrong, and we needed a fall back.”

“
And something, obviously,
went very wrong.”

Joal’s face puffed up like
it might explode and reddened until it was almost purple. “Fuck
you. We were doing it for you, you know. And how were we supposed
to know that Nabim would come out of the wood and fuck everything
up? We’d barely even talked about Nabim beyond which cell we’d put
him in, but he was ahead of us the whole way. He made his move the
night before ours. While you were sitting in that briefing, his
cousins and uncles and nephews and bastards were killing our
commanders and taking control. And I was supposed to be one of
them. That weasel’s assassins were practically outside my door when
the alarm was sounded. If not for a damn lot of luck, my whole
family’d be dead, and you’d be fighting those men over there
instead of bein’ saved by them.”

“
What kind of luck?” Lius
asked from Jaret’s side. Every eye turned to him. He seemed to
shrink in his filthy robes.

“
Who . . . ?” Joal
started.

“
The Xi Valati sent him,”
Jaret explained. “His name is Lius. We’ll get into the details
later, but for now, he’s the closest thing we have to the Xi
Valati.”

Joal grunted but answered
nonetheless. “Our own valati seems to have been hurrying somewhere
in the middle of the night when he ran into Nabim’s men on their
way to kill us.” He stopped to clear his throat, emotion rising.
“They’d have had us if he hadn’t screamed his bloody head off. They
were just outside of . . . of Karyn’s room . . . would have . . . .
In any case, they killed the valati, but he fought them long enough
for me and the boys the find our swords. Count on Nabim to send
assassins that can’t do much beyond stab people in their sleep
because we finished them without a scratch.”

“
And Karyn was alright?”
Jaret asked only because he knew it was the right thing to
say.

“
She barely even woke up,”
Joal smiled. “I’m glad you asked. She’s not promised yet, you know.
Would make a good Empress that one, nice wide hips for pushing out
lots of heirs.”

Jaret barely suppressed a
groan. Even if he had some interest in marrying, the girl was a
third his age and built like her father. She probably outweighed
Jaret by thirty pounds. But the Order had blessed Joal with six
daughters, and he had become an expert at finding them husbands
that could act as his sons – the majority of the officers behind
him were surely a selection of his five sons-in-law.

“
I see,” Lius continued,
sparing Jaret from refusing the offer, “so if the valati had not
been out in the middle of the night?”

“
We’d be in the ground
instead of standing here,” Joal growled. Lius backed away, nodding
absently as if considering a philosophical conundrum.

“
So, you fought off
Nabim’s men and maintained command of your units, but the rest of
the army?” Jaret asked.

“
As far as I know, they’re
all with Nabim. Except this one, of course.” Joal stared again at
Commander an’ Pmalatir. “I would have thought he’s with his uncle.”
He threw up his arms rather than complete the thought, but the
implication was clear. And Jaret couldn’t help but
agree.

“
So, what about you,
Commander an’ Pmalatir?” He pivoted toward the young commander.
“Where
do
you
stand? Why did you attack your uncle’s men rather than follow what
must have been your orders?”

Yatier an’ Pmalatir seemed
momentary shaken by the question, as if he were only now realizing
what he had done. He blinked several times, confidence wavering for
the first time. “I’m not exactly sure. I’ve been thinking for a
long time about the conversation we had that morning you thrashed
me – the same morning that everything happened. I had largely
forgotten it when I learned that you were a traitor, that you’d
killed my father, my brothers, sisters, cousins . . . .” Yatier’s
face turned suddenly hard and sullen. Jaret took a step back.
Joal’s guard went up, and he turned to the riders who’d accompanied
him. Yatier took a deep breath. “I would have killed you myself. I
hated you. I pledged loyalty to my uncle, the new Emperor, just
like everyone else. When he told me you’d escaped, I volunteered
without hesitation to hunt you down.

“
We’d been searching for a
week, following rumors, when word came that you’d attacked that
farm. We were on the other side of Tahsis, so I was sure we’d miss
you. We rode as quickly as we could and, bless the Order, found you
still there. I wanted to take you then and there, but for some
reason, it didn’t seem right, so we waited. Day after day, we
waited because the time just didn’t feel right. I told myself it
was because we were running you into this trap, but every day, I
thought more about what you’d said, the way your men had looked at
you, your writings, all the stories I’d read about you. And then I
thought about my uncle and everything I knew about him. Finally,
just this morning, I thought about that day when my family was
killed, and I realized . . . .” Yatier looked up, eyes growing
wide, “I realized that it was all wrong, that my uncle had lied.
That it was you that should be Emperor. Everything in my life had
led me to that conclusion, and I cursed myself for taking so long
to reach it.

“
From the moment my tutor
first gave me a copy of your history of the Liandrin Revolt – a
book strictly banned in the palace – to the chance meeting I had
with Commander Hanar that led to me facing you in the training
yard, it had led to that. And I knew it was the will of the Order.
I knew that the Order meant for me to serve you, not my uncle. All
that came to me as I watched the sun rise this morning, and I knew
what I had to do. I spoke with my officers then my men, and they
agreed. We were coming to offer you our aid when you started down
the hill. There was no time, so we charged around you and attacked
the regiment that we were supposed to be supporting.”

“
By the Order, all this
time,” Lius gasped from somewhere behind Jaret.

The comment sent a shiver
up Jaret’s spine, but he didn’t know why. “I’m glad you realized
that I wouldn’t ever plan or even condone what happened that
night,” Jaret said. “As you now know, I was neither a part of the
plot to overthrow your father nor an accomplice in the murder of
your family.”

“
I know that now, and I am
ashamed that I ever believed it. I just wished that I’d realized it
sooner and done something about it or, at least, brought all of my
men. I can only imagine the lies my uncle will tell them now that
I’ve turned against him.”

“
That would be all we
needed,” another voice interrupted, “to have to find someplace to
house five hundred horses in the middle of a forest. A hundred is
bad enough. Any more would be impossible.” Jaret turned just in
time to see Corwin Thalim, the commander of the Camp, weave through
the knights with an escort of fifty black-clad legionnaires. He
walked straight up to Jaret and saluted. “Sub-commander Thalim
reporting, lord commander. The Camp and all its men are yours to
command.”

“
Corwin, you bastard,”
Jaret responded as he wrapped his arms around the wiry middle-aged
man. Only a few inches taller than Jaret and of a similar build,
Corwin had the hard demeanor of a veteran drill sergeant, and that
was exactly what he’d been before Jaret tapped him to train the
first class of men to serve in the Legion of the Rising Sun all
those years ago. A few years later, they’d built the Camp together,
and he’d trained hundreds of men since, rising, just like Jaret,
from the ranks of the enlisted to a status typically reserved for
the nobility. “By the good and holy Order, it is good to see you. I
was beginning to doubt we’d make it to you.”

“
Sorry we were a bit late
to the party.” Corwin smiled and eyed the other commanders present.
“We were just coming across the gulch when we heard the knights hit
the line. We ran but didn’t manage anything more than a few volleys
of arrows before it was over.”

“
How did you know we were
coming?”

“
Well, you weren’t exactly
hiding, were you? The Emperor tried to keep your escape quiet, but
it sounds like it was pretty spectacular because the story spread
faster than even a bird should have been able to carry it. Did you
actually blow up half the Great Chamber?” Jaret chuckled at that
only because it was expected. If anything, he felt sick at the
thought of the fireball that had finished his men and allowed him
to escape. “Beyond that, you’ve been terrorizing every Imperial
unit from here to Sal Danar. A lot of our embedded men – the secret
ones anyway – are still in place, and they got word to us each time
you pulled off some miracle. From that, it was pretty easy to
figure out where you were heading, but we didn’t know for sure
until our man with that regiment over there,” he gestured back to
the men behind them, “showed up yesterday and told us what was
happening. We came as fast as we could but, obviously, not fast
enough.”

“
Well, it’s damn good you
did.” Jaret forced a smile. “I’m not sure I know how to get to the
Camp from here, and not even Nabim can probably be surprised like
that again.”

“
Speaking of which, what
should we do with that lot over there?” He gestured again to the
remnants of the regiment behind him. “They have a lot of
casualties, but there are probably six hundred still alive. They’ve
all surrendered, and Commander Quindin’s men have gathered their
weapons. They’re pretty much all conscripts, and they ain’t got
much fight left, but I can’t imagine you want ‘em telling Nabim
where we are and coming back to fight us again.”

“
Let them go,” Jaret said,
though it was against his first instinct. Corwin was right – they
had a long enough tunnel to dig without putting more dirt in – but
he knew the order’s source and saw the logic of it a moment later.
“You’re right that they’ll tell Nabim what’s happened and where we
are, but not before they’ve told a lot of other people what’s
happened here today. The people will know that we’re alive, that we
oppose Nabim, and that we’re winning. That’s more valuable than a
bunch of prisoners that we can’t possibly secure or
feed.”

“
As you say, lord
commander,” Corwin saluted. “If that’s settled, should we move this
conversation to someplace that’s not in the middle of an open
field? My scouts tell me that Nabim has upwards to five thousand
men in this area and a serious number on horse.”

“
By the Maelstrom’s dark
heart, why so many?” Jaret asked. “How many do you have at the
Camp?”

“
That’s classified,”
Corwin said with a wink and a glance at the other commanders. They
looked offended until Corwin slapped their arms and chuckled. “A
joke, fellas. I’ve got fifty there in various stages of training
and another fifty that have trickled in since Traeger’s coup
failed.”

“
And you?” Jaret turned to
Commander Quindin.

“
You know how many men I
have,” he bellowed in response. “You’ve been cutting my numbers for
years. I barely have two thousand now, and they’re barely adequate
to push ladders off of walls. I brought a little more than four
hundred with me, and they’re the only one’s I’d trust in a
fight.”

Jaret did the math but
tried not to think about the result. “Let’s get to the Camp,” he
conceded. “We’ll figure out the rest of the details there.” He
looked at the monk behind him then the sun rising in the sky. “I
think the Order will guide us.”

Chapter 30

The
31
^st
Day of Summer

Never in his life did Lius
imagine that he would see the legendary camp where the Legion of
the Rising Sun was trained. He had been eight when the Legion rose
to prominence. The story of how they had defeated a vicious band of
mercenaries turned raiders who had very nearly besieged Souris
spread through the Empire like the measles, and by the end of that
year, nearly every boy was pretending to be a legionnaire, was
dreaming of training at the Camp, of following the legendary Jaret
Rammeriz into battle. Lius had certainly not been immune to the
frenzy. He had played out the fantasies as enthusiastically as his
brothers and friends, but as a small, shy boy, he had always know
that was all they were.